A NEW two-storey ambulance shelter on the outskirts of the city has been given the green light.

The Ambulance Make Ready Centre has been approved to be built in Woollards Field, Lewes Road, in the Falmer area of Brighton.

It will include 34 ambulance bays, 82 car parking spaces and five disabled car parking spaces.

An initial proposal was submitted in 2012 and this has received several alterations following feedback.

The most recent changes were approved in January this year.

The planning application states that “a Make Ready Centre (MRC) is a base to which ambulance crews report at the start and end of their shift and where vehicles are cleaned, replenished and maintained”.

It adds: “The sites are operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and include storage of medical and other supplies, an area for staff and crew refreshment, cleaning and minor maintenance of vehicles and administrative support, to include training and educational facilities.”

It said the new MRC was “essential to replace the current inadequate depot facility at Brighton General Hospital and serve the Brighton Seven Dials, Brighton General Hospital, Brighton Hollingbury, Peacehaven, Lewes, Shoreham, Hove, Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath Ambulance Community Response Posts (ACRP) as well as reduce response time potential to the A23 and A27 Trunk Roads”.

The application said that Brighton and Hove City Council had “long been aware” of South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Trust’s “urgent requirement for a suitable site for a new MRC in the Brighton area”.

It claimed the “existing network of ageing ambulance stations are not equipped or of a size that economically enables them to be equipped, in particular to clean vehicles to increasingly stringent infection control standards”.